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Consider this review a cri de coeur over a book written as a cri de coeur. I have reviewed dozens of books in my professional life, but this review will be different. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (New York: Liveright, 2020), 386 pages, $18.95 (Hardback).Īs I begin, please indulge me as I make a few personal prefatory remarks. But hope is central to a Christian historical method. All we have before us as we reach the end of the book is a cliff edge, with no path forward to forgiveness and reconciliation.
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Du Mez’s work reads less as history and more as ideology, and an ideology with little in the way of faith, hope, or charity.
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